"This is the place I return to when I need to feel regenerated. I feel it as I drive onto the reserve, the combination of the bluffs, the rocks and the water. It's a very powerful place. It's a place I keep coming home to."
Darlene Johnston '86
Professor of Law, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law
First female Aboriginal law student and professor at the U of T Faculty of Law
Relaxed and serene at her ancestral home on the Bruce Peninsula's Cape Croker Reserve, Darlene Johnston draws her strength from the sounds of the wind and the water, and the knowledge that generations before her have shared in the same respect for the land. A member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, and the first in her family to attend university and law school, Darlene is passionately committed to the protection of her community's fishing and land rights and preserving the cultural heritage of her ancestors. Her decision to pursue law grew gradually from a desire to help her people receive justice from the courts. After first joining Ottawa's law school, and then U of T's in 1989, she soon left to pursue a decade-long court battle that resulted in fishing and land rights for her band. In 2000, she returned to the law school where today she juggles her teaching and scholarship with continued work for her First Nation and international work for the Mayan people of Belize.
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